ghItlhpu' SuStel, jatlh:
> A kiss is not a bite. People saying chop as an equivalent to kiss drive me crazy.
Though it's of course not a one-to-one equivalent, Marc was the one who first used it.
HIchop, bang.
"Give us a kiss, love." (Radio Times)
Clearly it's a rendition of the cultural meaning rather than the physical action, but it does show that Klingons probably don't kiss as a sign of romantic affection.
It doesn't show that at all. I acknowledge that Okrand used chop
in place of kiss, but he provided no context. Are we meant
to take this as a completely literal translation, and chop
means kiss as well as bite? Are we supposed to
understand that Klingons don't kiss for affection, but they do
bite? Are we supposed to take this as a tongue-in-cheek
translation? Are we supposed to conclude that Klingons bite
instead of kiss someone beloved, but others might be kissed
instead of bitten? To whom is this said? We don't know.
taH:> I don't like hearing fan over-generalizations of what they've seen on screen to
> every aspect of a Klingon's life.
Please don't assume my motivations.
I didn't say you were over-generalizing. I was explaining the background of my dislike of using chop for a romantic or sexual kiss, and that background includes hearing people interpolating the tiny amount of culture information we get on-screen into an entire culture.
That said, I think you are over-generalizing. You've got a concept of what Klingons would or would not do, and you're using that concept to justify the lack of a word. You might be right or you might not, but either way you're taking the very scanty cultural information we've got and generalizing it to an entire culture.
This is actually a problem with most alien races in Star
Trek: they tend to be painted, even by the writers, with
very broad strokes. All Klingons are warriors (until they're not).
All Ferengi are after profit above all else (until they're not).
All Vulcans are intellectual (until they're not). This is the
classic Planet of Hats problem. On the Planet of Hats, there's no
room for a Klingon tenderly looking at his baby (until a writer
wants to make a point, which just proves the rule).
taH:> There was a great cover of HolQeD, my favorite cover, showing a Klingon man
> holding a Klingon baby very close and looking down at it tenderly. Go ahead and
> tell me that no Klingon would ever do that, or that no Klingon doing that would
> ever press their lips to the baby.
> Or is everyone thoughtlessly equating kissing with a sexual or romantic act?
Firstly, yes, a Klingon might well press their lips to a baby - but I don't think a Klingon would press their lips to a baby in a regular and culturally constituted way that would justify developing a specific and dedicated verb for pressing their lips to something. That's the distinction.
But what on-screen scene led you to that conclusion? What piece
of Okrandian canon tells you this? Nothing at all: you're
generalizing from the Klingon Hat.
The closest I'd get to agreeing with you here is that a Klingon would certainly nuzzle some part of their head to the baby's. And if anything, in this context I think a Klingon would probably press their *forehead* to the baby. We do know from canon that the forehead is a potent symbol of heritage and of family for Klingons (KGT 28-29, and the curse Hab SoSlI' Quch "your mother has a smooth forehead" from PK), and that festive occasions are times that bring warriors to butt foreheads to show camaraderie (KGT 157-158).
And those things have absolutely zilch to do with fathers showing
affection to their children. You might as well claim that Klingons
rub ice cream cones on their foreheads to demonstrate how
delicious they are.
And have you ever seen the Inuit kunik or Māori hongi, methods of greeting and showing affection that are performed by pressing noses together rather than lips? The assumption that the lips are a unique and universal site of expressing even non-sexual physical affection is not just a human-centric, but an ethnocentric one and one that, in the absence of any evidence, I don't believe we can fairly make about Klingons either.
No, we can't! This is absolutely correct. So... how can you make
the claim that Klingons DON'T kiss their children OR that they rub
foreheads? You have no data.
But the Radio Times translation indicates that even if they do, they probably don't care for doing it in parmaq.
Unless Okrand clarifies, one can be a bang without being
a parmaqqay. bang is not necessarily romantic; parmaqqay
is. And again, we don't know the context of the Radio Times quote.
Give us a kiss, love is something that an English person
might say to a lover or a child or even a complete stranger. It
does not automatically mean romance. We have no context.
-- SuStel http://trimboli.name